


how you walk the tightrope with razor blade shoes

by mimizans



Category: Dimension 20 (Web Series)
Genre: Character Study, Gen, Introspection, Mental Health Issues, Past Child Abuse, Recovery, Therapy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-29
Updated: 2020-05-29
Packaged: 2021-03-02 17:55:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,383
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24430951
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mimizans/pseuds/mimizans
Summary: “Have you thought about getting a familiar of your own? It could give you something to focus on when you’re having thoughts that upset you. Pets can be very good friends, too.”Aelwen smiles, rueful.Because I’m so good at making those,she thinks.-aelwen goes to therapy and gets an absolutely enormous rabbit familiar because it's what she deserves
Comments: 7
Kudos: 76





	how you walk the tightrope with razor blade shoes

**Author's Note:**

> content warning: this fic contains mentions of emotional abuse perpetrated by parents against their children, unhealthy coping mechanisms (drugs/sex/alcohol), violent and frightening thoughts, dissociative episodes, and the mental illness that can result from prolonged abuse and trauma. in this fic aelwen exhibits symptoms of anxiety, depression, and borderline personality disorder. if you have specific questions about content, please DM me on twitter at witchjail and i will be happy to answer them. stay safe!

Aelwen’s been seeing a therapist. It’s not something she advertises, but Adaine had begged her (and it’s still a novelty, to have Adaine ask for her for something and for Aelwen to feel that she can give it) and Jawbone had told her that he thought it would be a good idea for her to talk to someone (in that frustratingly fatherly way he has, so much warmer than her own father, so much more concerned about her well-being after months of knowing her than her parents had been after raising her from birth), so Aelwen did. It’s not like she has anything better going on. She takes classes towards getting her GED, she tiptoes around Mordred Manor, and she goes to therapy. 

Her therapist is a high elf named Jastira. She’s... fine, Aelwen thinks. She asks insightful questions and she never seems shocked at anything Aelwen says, no matter strange or violent or shameful it is. Aelwen almost feels like she could cry in front of her, if Aelwen cried. 

She never really did, growing up. It was unbecoming and upset her parents. Their faces would grow cold and their grips would grow tight whenever Aelwen so much as started to tear up at a skinned knee. It reflected badly on them to have her running around sobbing, they said, made them look like unfit parents - so Aelwen simply stopped. She didn’t cry. If tears threatened to spring to her eyes she would blink them away, grit her teeth and hold her breath until she was so tense she felt like she would snap, but at least she wasn’t crying. She was being good; and if she was good, her parents would love her. Or at least they wouldn’t hurt her, and that was pretty much the same thing, wasn’t it?

Adaine had cried, of course. Had wailed and thrown tantrums well into school age, long after Aelwen had learned better. The world seemed made to bring Adaine pain. Everything was too much for her, too loud, too close, too intense. Aelwen hated seeing Adaine cry. Every tear felt like danger, even if it wasn’t Alwen that was being bad. 

She also loved to see Adaine cry, and wasn’t that a terrible trait to have? Aelwen could remember baiting Adaine into tears in front of their parents just so that she could see Adaine being told that she was bad. It had made Aelwen feel bigger, to see her sister brought low. She was better than Adaine, she knew. Smarter, more eloquent, better at doing what she was supposed to. Her parents told her so, after all. It didn’t matter that she felt numb all the time. That her palms prickled with cold sweat whenever her parents came into a room. That she clenched her jaw so tightly even when she slept that it constantly hurt. It was all fine. She was good. 

When she’d started “acting out,” as she’s sure her parents would have called it, it was in secret. Never anywhere her parents could see. She tried everything she could to make herself feel something, to make the numbness recede. To feel like Aelwen, just Aelwen, not her parents’ better daughter or Adaine’s better sister. She didn’t know who Aelwen was, but that didn’t stop her from trying to find out any way she could. Sex, alcohol, drugs - nothing made her feel any more real, but she kept doing it anyway. If she stopped, she’d be overcome by that well of sadness that sprang eternal in her chest or the bubbling rage that roiled in her belly, and that thought scared her enough that a bottle or a pill or a stranger’s naked chest was never too far out of reach.

Aelwen realizes now that there are entire days and nights that she doesn’t remember, even when she wasn’t on anything. Dissociative episodes, Jastira says. Very common for people who experience childhood abuse. Aelwen’s mind’s way of trying to protect her. It doesn’t make them any less disconcerting. It still happens, even now that she knows intellectually that she is safe and cared for. She’ll come to standing in front of the fireplace and have no memory of how she got there, or be unable to remember something that she did the previous day. It makes her feel out of control and unmoored, and she hates it. If she is not in control, then she cannot be good. If she cannot be good, then she is not worth anything. Jastira says it’s okay for her to feel that way. That Aelwen has to accept how things make her feel before she can change her reactions. By telling herself that she is _not_ feeling out of control, she’s refusing to accept reality, Jastira tells her. She _does_ feel out of control, and unmoored, and angry, and confused, and wound too tight, and coming apart at the seams, and sometimes Aelwen feels all of these things at once, and sometimes she feels absolutely nothing but empty.

“I can’t snap myself out of it, sometimes,” Aelwen tells Jastira. She picks at her cuticle. “Most times.”

“When you have been able to come out of those cycles of thought by yourself, how did you do it?” Jastira asks in her low, soothing voice.

Aelwen purses her lips. “Holding my sister’s frog helps.”

“Her... frog?”

“Her familiar. He’s quite calming. If he happens to be around when I... get into a state, holding him and petting him can help.”

Jastira nods. “Have you thought about getting a familiar of your own? It could give you something to focus on when you’re having thoughts that upset you. Pets can be very good friends, too.”

Aelwen smiles, rueful. _Because I’m so good at making those,_ she thinks.

“Unconditional love, a chance to form a positive emotional attachment,” Jastira continues. “I think it’s a good idea, if you’re open to it.”

“I’ll think about it,” Aelwen says. “It might be nice.”

It takes her another week to decide to cast the spell. She’s anxious about it, worried that she’ll mess up this small creature like she’s messed up so many other things, not be able to take care of it like she couldn’t take care of Adaine. But Jastira is right; it is a good idea. It will be nice to have something that is hers, something to learn how to love and nurture.

Aelwen waits until the middle of the night, when the living room is empty. The charcoal, incense, and herbs go into the fireplace, and she draws the runes in chalk on the brick. She’s not sure what form she wants the familiar to take. Something... cuddleable, so probably a mammal. Soft. Comforting to touch. Still and tranquil when she is not. The idea in her head is vague as her lips and hands move to cast the spell. There’s a soft blue glow from the fireplace as the magic takes hold, and Aelwen sees her familiar takes shape. 

Long ears shift towards her as she inhales. Before her sits the largest rabbit she’s ever seen, tawny brown and shaking off sparks of magic. “Hello,” Aelwen says. She holds out a hand and the rabbit hops forward, sniffing gently at her hand with its velvet-soft nose. Aelwen pets over the rabbit’s back, and can barely stifle an elated laugh when it hops into her lap. She buries her fingers in its thick fur. “Oh, you’re quite wonderful, aren’t you?” she says. Aelwen carries the rabbit up to bed with her, its weigh a comforting pressure in her arms, and goes to sleep on the top bunk with it curled around her head. It's the best sleep she's had in a long time.

When Aelwen goes to see Jastira the next week, it’s with a huge rabbit draped around her shoulders. Aelwen can feel the comforting beat of her familiar’s heart against her neck. It makes her unclench her jaw just a little bit, makes the tremors in her hands subside.

“Ah,” says Jastira with a smile. “You have a new friend, I see.”

“Yes,” Aelwen replies, settling into the plush couch. Her rabbit hops down off her shoulders to settle in her lap, and Aelwen runs a hand along its back. “I guess I do.”

**Author's Note:**

> i love aelwen abernant and she loves her enormous rabbit. its name is tashie, if you're wondering. 
> 
> shoutout to mac pastelwerebear on twitter for suggesting a flemish giant rabbit as aelwen's familiar! 
> 
> come follow me on [twitter](http://www.twitter.com/witchjail) where d20 hours are 24/7 right now


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